The Vancouver Warriors marched into Philadelphia with a solid battle plan last weekend, and they stormed off the floor with a 21-12 victory that left many Wings fans booing (par for the course in Philadelphia) or leaving early.
Heading into Week 18, the Wings sit in 1oth place in the NLL with a 5-8 record. Success has been hard to come by this season, but under the new unified standings, the Wings are still in playoff contention. A strong finish to the season could see them sneak into one of the final spots. Vancouver is in the same position at 5-9, and so were looking to make a huge impact.
“I’m going to wear this one on my chin,” said Wings’ captain Blaze Riorden. “We’ve got four big points ahead of us. This game has a funny way of bouncing. It rewards the team that takes care of the ball, and works a little harder. Tonight that was the other team.
“We’re still confident,” he said. “We believe in this. Tonight’s totally on me. I don’t think we had a great warmup… As the leader of this team, I have to set the tone, and I didn’t do that. This one is on me.
Philadelphia seemed ill-prepared for the weapons in Vancouver’s arsenal. The game began with Owen Grant quickly scoring the first goal for the Warriors, and they kept blasting missiles into the net for the rest of the game. By the end of the first quarter, it was 6-1 Vancouver. Philadelphia fans (as well as the players) seemed stunned.
Zach Higgins, who arguably has saved the defense many times this season, could not handle the platoon of relentless shooters that were breathing down his neck. Although the Wings outscored Vancouver 6-3 in the second quarter, the defense was flat and the offense appeared to be trying too hard at times, but not trying hard enough at other times. Holden Cattoni and Mitch Jones each scored twice in the frame.
The Wings went to their locker room down 9-7 at halftime. Philadelphia fans hoped the new plan in the second half of play would allow them to emerge victorious, but such was not the case.
Quarter three saw Vancouver outscore Philadelphia 8-4 for a 17-11 lead. Keegan Bal, who had been held to three assists so far, exploded for five goals in the frame.
Philadelphia was feeling hopeful in the fourth quarter due to their recent late-game efforts on home floor, but there was no miracle comeback this game.
There were more pieces of Philadelphia’s battle plan that were missing—not just the warmup referenced by Riorden.
Head coach and GM Paul Day reflected on how he felt reflecting on the slow start of the offense by saying, “I don’t know. We changed our warmup a few games ago… Even when we got the game back to 9-7, I still felt our ‘compete’ sucked… Then we took two bad penalties in the third quarter, which we got to 12-9, we took two bad penalties that took it to 14-9. Disappointed front to back, I think it is our worst performance since day one, including when we had four or five guys who’d never played a box game in their life, so a lot of passengers tonight.”
The Wings are going to have to have fewer passengers and more people ready to battle this week. They have a home game Thursday night (rescheduled) against Saskatchewan and an afternoon game on Saturday against Buffalo.
One positive note is that Joe Resetarits continued adding to his all time United States scoring total, and now sits at 300 career goals.
